President Obama is poised to declare the first-ever
national monument recognizing the struggle for gay rights, singling out a
sliver of green space and part of the surrounding Greenwich Village
neighborhood as the birthplace of America’s modern gay liberation
movement.

While most national monuments have highlighted iconic wild landscapes
or historic sites from centuries ago, this reflects the country’s
diversity of terrain and peoples in a different vein: It would be the
first national monument anchored by a dive bar and surrounded by a
warren of narrow streets that long has been regarded the historic center
of gay cultural life in New York City.

Federal officials, including Interior Secretary Sally Jewell,
National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis and Rep. Jerrold
Nadler (D-N.Y.), will hold a listening session on May 9 to solicit
feedback on the proposal. Barring a last-minute complication — city
officials are still investigating the history of the land title — Obama
is prepared to designate the area part of the National Park Service as
soon as next month, which commemorates gay pride.

As I have gone from identity with ego to identity with soul or witness, I have found a
space and a way in relation to the mystery of the universe that allows me to be with
the suffering that lives on this plane, mine and others, in a way that doesn’t
overwhelm me. I’m not overwhelmed by my impotence to take it all away and I
don’t have to look away from it, and I deal with it as it arises.

“Part of the human experience
involves losing our naturalness and becoming more ‘artificial’. At a
certain point in our development, we lose trust in life, and fear is
programmed into our systems. Out of fear, the mask is developed and this
mask does not allow us to be ourselves. The mask is a pretense that we
put on with the goal of being loved. Thus, the mask is used to force the
other to love us. Since forced love is not real love, this only creates
more hatred. This is the root of what we call suffering.

Every
moment in life is absolute in itself. That’s all there is. There is
nothing other than this present moment; there is no past, there is no
future; there is nothing but this. So when we don’t pay attention to
each little this, we miss the whole thing.